What Can a Doll Teach Us About Black Business?
08/19/20 • 32 min
When Yelitsa Jean-Charles was a young girl, she didn’t see any dolls that looked like her. In fact, when her parents tried to give her a non-white doll, she cried because it wasn’t “the pretty one.”
She didn’t know it yet, but in that moment, a business was born.
Today Yelitsa is the founder of Healthy Roots Dolls, a toy company that creates dolls and storybooks to empower young girls and showcase the beauty of our diversity. In this episode of Longitudes Radio, part two in a three-part series on the Black business landscape, she shares her entrepreneurial journey and how those feelings of childhood disappointment ultimately paved the path for her future success.
“I grew up and started to feel less like a princess and more like a pumpkin because I didn't see people celebrated for having hair that looked like my own,” she remembers. “I saw an opportunity ... with our Zoe doll and her powerful hair full of curl power.”
Like many aspiring entrepreneurs, at first, Yelitsa struggled. And she encountered skepticism about her ideas and her ability to translate that vision into a profitable company.
But she kept grinding, learning new skills, figuring out what worked — and what didn’t work. She aligned herself with mentors who believed in her business and supported products more representative of the people who ultimately purchase them.
Despite her successes, Yelitsa still has doubts, grappling with her place in a system that has long denied business opportunities to people of color.
“Even with all the accolades, even with all the traction, I still often question the validity of my business and the opportunities that I can pursue,” she admits.
Yelitsa remains hopeful that her story will inspire other women of color to pursue their business dreams.
“My goal in life, my purpose in life, is the liberation and economic freedom of Black women through education and financial literacy,” she says, goals she’s now achieving one doll at a time.
Ultimately, however, the long hours, lack of sleep, self-doubt and yes, triumphs, all bring Yelitsa back to her early days ... without a doll that looked like her.
“What they're playing with,” Yelitsa says of children today “should represent the world and the people that they're going to interact with so that they can learn about others.”
If you missed it, check out part one in our podcast series on Black business, a conversation with former U.S. Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx.
When Yelitsa Jean-Charles was a young girl, she didn’t see any dolls that looked like her. In fact, when her parents tried to give her a non-white doll, she cried because it wasn’t “the pretty one.”
She didn’t know it yet, but in that moment, a business was born.
Today Yelitsa is the founder of Healthy Roots Dolls, a toy company that creates dolls and storybooks to empower young girls and showcase the beauty of our diversity. In this episode of Longitudes Radio, part two in a three-part series on the Black business landscape, she shares her entrepreneurial journey and how those feelings of childhood disappointment ultimately paved the path for her future success.
“I grew up and started to feel less like a princess and more like a pumpkin because I didn't see people celebrated for having hair that looked like my own,” she remembers. “I saw an opportunity ... with our Zoe doll and her powerful hair full of curl power.”
Like many aspiring entrepreneurs, at first, Yelitsa struggled. And she encountered skepticism about her ideas and her ability to translate that vision into a profitable company.
But she kept grinding, learning new skills, figuring out what worked — and what didn’t work. She aligned herself with mentors who believed in her business and supported products more representative of the people who ultimately purchase them.
Despite her successes, Yelitsa still has doubts, grappling with her place in a system that has long denied business opportunities to people of color.
“Even with all the accolades, even with all the traction, I still often question the validity of my business and the opportunities that I can pursue,” she admits.
Yelitsa remains hopeful that her story will inspire other women of color to pursue their business dreams.
“My goal in life, my purpose in life, is the liberation and economic freedom of Black women through education and financial literacy,” she says, goals she’s now achieving one doll at a time.
Ultimately, however, the long hours, lack of sleep, self-doubt and yes, triumphs, all bring Yelitsa back to her early days ... without a doll that looked like her.
“What they're playing with,” Yelitsa says of children today “should represent the world and the people that they're going to interact with so that they can learn about others.”
If you missed it, check out part one in our podcast series on Black business, a conversation with former U.S. Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx.
Previous Episode
Black Business and Transportation Equity
Whether at the local or federal level, Anthony Foxx knows perhaps better than anybody how transportation can forever transform a community — for better or worse.
As U.S. Secretary of Transportation for President Barack Obama and the former mayor of Charlotte, North Carolina, Foxx strived to modernize the American transportation landscape, recognizing how such an agenda could serve as a great equalizer for communities of color.
“There’s a reason why we use the phrase ‘other side of the tracks,’” Foxx, now Chief Policy Officer at Lyft, says in this episode of Longitudes Radio. “These systems were used as dividers, and it’s very apparent when you go back into history ... infrastructure was weaponized to reinforce the ideas of what was important in a city, who was important in a city and who wasn’t.”
The conversation with Foxx kicks off a three-part podcast series exploring how we can create more business opportunities for Black entrepreneurs — both today and tomorrow. In upcoming episodes, we’ll examine the Black business landscape through the eyes of an up-and-coming small business owner and take a more academic look at systematic, pervasive challenges unique to the Black business community.
As for Foxx, he highlights how the coronavirus pandemic brought certain policy challenges to the forefront, what has changed since his days in the Obama administration — and what hasn’t — and whether we’re on the verge of a truly breakthrough moment in the pursuit of a more just and inclusive society.
“There is a much richer conversation occurring in this country about racial unrest and the legacy of slavery and things that were subterranean,” Foxx says. “But they’re very much on the surface and in people’s minds today.”
And what about futuristic technologies like drones, autonomous vehicles and artificial intelligence? Foxx says we’re on the verge of a “transportation revolution,” a movement that will allow opportunistic businesses to pivot alongside society at large.
On a personal note, Foxx harkens back to his adolescent years, when he was told he had to be “twice as good” as his peers simply because of the color of his skin — and whether he still possesses that mindset as a father now.
“I don’t want him to feel like he has to be perfect,” Foxx says of his message to his 14-year-old son. “I want him to be comfortable being himself, and I want him to be comfortable saying what he thinks ... if we can give our kids the gift of owning their perspective and their worldview and being comfortable in that, that would be a great step forward.”
Next Episode
How Business Can Redefine the American Dream
We’re closing out our three-part podcast series exploring the Black business landscape by going back to the beginning — the founding of the United States — and examining a not-so-simple challenge: How do we rewire the American Dream for Black people?
To answer that question, we welcome Nat Irvin, Assistant Dean of Thought Leadership and Civic Engagement at the University of Louisville, to Longitudes Radio. Irvin argues that business is uniquely suited to dismantle systematic racism and fuel a more equitable society.
“The American Dream is being reborn. And I don't look at it as a negative at all. It's part of evolution,” Irvin explains. “But there's no guarantees that our democracy is going to work. History shows that democracies generally fade out. And so if ours is going to work, we're going to as a country have to embrace all of its citizens, and they have to be vested into the dream itself.”
One way to do that is through empowering Black entrepreneurs to follow their business dreams, giving them access to financial capital — and most importantly, the opportunity to recover from failure.
“If you look at the history of America ... it's all about losing. It is all about failures,” he says. “All about businesses starting and failing. That's how we got America. It was all about people trying ideas, and they fail. But they got another shot.”
Given social unrest and a global pandemic, Irvin argues that it’s up to businesses to rise to the challenge of the moment. Business leaders can no longer sit on the sidelines and wait for societal change — they must articulate their values, bring stakeholders together and ultimately drive tangible action.
In fact, Irvin says a silver lining of the coronavirus pandemic is the chance for a “fundamental reset,” an opportunity for us to reexamine what truly matters and how we’ll live in the world of tomorrow. An accelerant of such transformation, Irvin says, is enabling younger generations to redesign our social contract.
“I think that communities need to focus on the next generation of young minds,” he says. “That's where we've got to change the trajectory of America.”
If you missed it, check out part one in our podcast series on Black business, a conversation with former U.S. Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx. You can find part two, a chat with entrepreneur Yelitsa Jean-Charles, here.
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